I want to tell you what I learned about love.

Because before, when I heard the words, “I love you,” I thought, “For how long?”

But you said, “I love you.” And you are still here. Love came quietly, in the form of little notes and my favourite coffee beans. A framed artwork you knew I would love. It came as a gentle presence hushing my nightmares. A small book of encouragements for sad days.

I want to tell you (reader) that he taught me how to love—the unconditional kind that accepts and stays and stays. I want to make sure he always knows he is my only anchor, my harbor from the storms. That if I could, I would stay for him.

Because now when I hear, “I love you,” I think, “Forever.”

Twelve years.

Twelve years with someone I never expected to have in my life, who dropped in seemingly without warning, to completely alter the plans I had crafted for myself. But it was a shift I didn't know would save me.

There have been countless moments when I've looked at you and wondered how you exist, in such a way that is so impossible. There is a level of safety and security I have with you that I'd been searching for my whole life. There is this love you give me that is so unconditional it shows me a glimpse of who God is.

And within the past years, the years that have plunged us into depths previously unknown, these years that surrounded us with death and loss of our children, even now, when I am incapacitated by grief and darkness, in and out of hospital, you, through your own tears, lifted me from ashes to wash me in a cleansing flood.

You are impossible. The one who loves regardlessly, accepts completely, serves willingly.

There will never be words enough for what you are to me. Hence why I have rarely tried to put you into words. Even through this writing, I am failing to capture all you are and all you have given me; "love" is too small a word. One thing is certain: that I am here because of you. I am who I am because of you. You are the best thing in my life. If love could save me, it would be yours.

I love you. I love you. I love you so much. I love you forever.

You know me. You see me. You love me. You love me without reason, without conditions.

I know God's love is real because of you.

That is what I know to be true.